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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27443101">two forever</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dangercupcake/pseuds/dangercupcake'>dangercupcake</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jongley/pseuds/Jongley'>Jongley</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Men's Hockey RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(Like John Mulaney's Wife), ABO Sex, All Ovi's Gatorade Are Belong To Nicke, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Friends to Lovers, Fun Facts In The Notes, Getting Together, Knotting, M/M, Mama Ovechkina is the Most Alpha of Alphas, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Nesting, Nicke is a bitch in the best way, Nicke's purple gatorade, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Ovi Likes To Be Bossed Around, Toxic NHL North American Bullshit, more like friends to fuckbuddies to lovers tbh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:27:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>14,373</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27443101</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dangercupcake/pseuds/dangercupcake, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jongley/pseuds/Jongley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"My friends call me Nicke," Backström—no, Nickie—finally said. His voice was very quiet, and Sasha found himself automatically leaning in to catch it, lowering his own volume to match.</p><p>"Okay, Nickie!" he whisper-yelled, grinning widely. "I like this! Nickie is good nickname, hah, <em>nickname,</em> get it, Nickie?"</p><p>Nickie clearly got it, but he didn't deign to laugh, or even smile. Sasha vowed to be funnier, the next time he tried to make a joke.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Nicklas Backstrom/Alexander Ovechkin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>266</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Hockey Big Bang (2020)</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>ahhhh here it is!! first of all, please go check out the incredible <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27440656">mix</a> by the lovely <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery">growlery</a>, it is so good, 15/10, would listen to (and quite possibly tear up) again!!! but, seriously, all of the thanks to them for creating such an amazing mix, pls go tell them how wonderful it is!!</p><p>thank you as well to iaintafraidofnoghostbear for the beta, and to everyone who provided encouragement as we worked on this!!</p><p>also special extra thank you from me (jongles) to dangercupcake for basically swooping in and saving this thing from languishing in my drafts forever! it was the second srs fic i ever started writing, and honestly i was starting to think it was never gonna see the light of day—but then they came and did all the hard work of fixing things i was Stuck on and generally just made it eons better than it would've been. thank you friend!!! &lt;333</p><p>no major warnings for this one; in this 'verse omegas do go through a short heat every month or so, alphas a longer rut twice a year. both are more comfortable/enjoyable with a partner, but that's totally optional. see end notes for translations of the few swedish &amp; russian words used, and also sourcing for a couple anecdotes we included.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Technically, Aleksandr Ovechkin gets drafted into the NHL twice. The first time, in 2003, the Florida Panthers try to take him four different times, but the NHL blocks them each time. Finally the League gives up, and lets them write his name down in the ninth round, in case their GM’s argument prevails and it’s decided that leap years will be taken into account, in which case Sasha would be old enough.</p><p>It doesn’t work, though, and Sasha remains two days too young to be considered for the 2003 draft. Instead, he goes first overall in 2004, just in time for a lockout that drags on all season.</p><p>Sasha isn’t too peeved about it. Sure, he’s eager to get to America, to start playing hockey at the highest level possible, but Dynamo Moscow is ecstatic to have him tear it up in the Superleague for another year.</p><p>He is peeved when he fucks up his shoulder in Grand Forks; can only watch as his team collapses, as the Canadians pile on goal after goal and leave the Russians with silver. It rankles Sasha more than he’d like to admit that he doesn’t get on the scoreboard in the gold medal game; what good is being a top three scoring leader, making the tournament All Star Team, if he's useless when his team needs him the most?</p><p>Sitting out two months of the season while he recovers also sucks, because injury recovery always sucks, but getting back in time for playoffs, the joy of helping his team win the Russian Championship, overwrites all the negative feelings his injury caused.</p><p>This is the summer, he decides, that it’s time to take the risk. Everything feels good. He’s looking good. It’s time. Even though the contract with Omsk has an out for him if the NHL lockout ends, he decides not to renew, to not play another season in Russia. He was meant to be playing NHL hockey, and he knows it.</p><p>And then two weeks after he opts out of the Omsk contract, he inks a new contract with the Washington Capitals. Two days after that, the new CBA is ratified. The lockout is over, and Sasha is more excited than he’s ever been before.</p><p>His mama, of course, is still worried. She pores over his contract with a fine-tooth comb, and she’s grudgingly agreed that George McPhee seems like a fine GM who won’t fuck her baby over, but she has a lot of disparaging comments about the way the NHL handles dynamics-related issues.</p><p>“I still don’t like that they make you schedule your ruts, Sashenka. It’s unnatural, is what it is. Your rut should be—”</p><p>Sasha knows better than to interrupt his mama, but he’s heard this all before. “Yes, Mama, you’re right. Ruts are a special time, when we let our instincts take over, so that we can control ourselves the rest of the year. But, Mama, this is a small price for me to pay to play the best hockey in the world.”</p><p>“Yes, well. That may be true, but I still don’t like it. How are you adjusting, otherwise? How are the Americans treating you?”</p><p>Sasha smiles, and launches into stories from training camp the past few days.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>After his first year in the NHL, Sasha spends most of the summer lazy and being babied by Mama, and then ruts with a school friend. She’s such a sweet, wonderful omega, who lets Sasha shower her with affection—but she's almost too sweet, gives him a feeling not unlike the ache in his teeth after the first time he got dessert at an American diner; he’d eaten the whole slice of chocolate cake by himself even though it was served on a plate as big as the one that had held his pasta, had given him a stomach ache that kept him up half the night. She tells him while they’re locked together that one of the alphas she works with has asked her to be exclusive, and Sasha kisses her neck and congratulates her, easy to find happiness for her inside his relief that she isn’t expecting anything from him.</p><p>He thinks about it a little on the flight back, finds himself wishing she’d been meaner and crueler, more demanding. He’s not sure what to do with this realization about himself. He’s never met a demanding omega—not in Russia, not in the United States, not in Canada. He wouldn’t know where to go to find one.</p><p>He goes straight to Vancouver for the 2006 draft. The team didn’t tell him <em>why</em> he’s going, just that he is, so . . . he is.</p><p>It becomes terrifyingly clear when George starts coaching him through the English.</p><p>When he reads out, “The Washington Capitals are happy to pick . . ” he knows he sounds awful, but at least his voice doesn’t shake. He’s pretty sure he butchers the pronunciation of <em>Nicklas Backström,</em> and he blinks around the room, looking to see—</p><p>A chubby-cheeked omega with tangled blond hair and the smell of lilies-of-the-valley.</p><p>Nicklas Backström. Swedish center. Brynäs IF. 26 points, 10 goals, 30 penalty minutes. Elitserien Rookie of the Year, Swedish Junior Hockey Player of the Year, fourth highest drafted Swede ever. And omega. <em>Unbonded</em> omega.</p><p>The Caps aren’t going to be the first team to have an unbonded alpha <em>and</em> an unbonded omega on their roster at the same time—but they’re the first team to draft an unbonded alpha as number one overall, and then pick an unbonded omega in the top five of the draft the year after. It’s definitely atypical, definitely surprising, <em>and</em> they had Sasha announce it.</p><p>Sasha is not stupid. He knows that as long as he doesn’t fuck up too bad, he’ll be named captain sooner rather than later. He knows he is the franchise’s face of the future.</p><p>If he and Backström were both betas, this would be a cute PR stunt. The team had been trying to get feel-good PR all last season and failed miserably every time; this is exactly what they’d been looking for. And by having their star, their future captain, be the one to pick him and hand him his jersey . . . that shows Backström how seriously they’re taking this, how much they value what he'll bring to their team.</p><p>But . . . they’re not both betas.</p><p>They’re an alpha and an omega.</p><p>The NHL would never allow something so uncouth as a public statement that the Capitals intend to have Sasha and Backström bond, but this . . . this is a sly implication to anyone paying attention.</p><p>And Sasha, like always, is paying attention.</p><p>He girds himself for a call from Mama later, and keeps the smile on his face.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>Months later, Sasha still has Backström’s scent in his nose.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>Sasha’s second season in the NHL, Sasha Semin finally returns to the Capitals from the KHL. It’s a good thing they’re both Russian, and that their language is so superior to English and has provided myriad nicknames for them to choose from—otherwise, they'd be left to the mercy of their teammates' choice on how to differentiate them, which would be absolutely unacceptable for all the obvious reasons.</p><p>Sanya immediately makes Sasha’s life better; he’s a beta, but he’s got an alpha sister, so he’s used to placidly ignoring the instinct-driven behavior of alphas.</p><p>He’s also Russian and a total bitch, which are Alex’s two favorite qualities in a person. Sanya is <em>perfect</em>, and Sasha adopts him as his new best friend immediately.</p><p>It’s so nice to be able to talk to someone in Russian in the locker room, to double-check new English words he doesn’t know. It doesn’t hurt that any time they hear the Alexes speaking Russian, their teammates automatically assume they’re being shit-talked and get real defensive about it. They’re usually not; Sasha, always generous, prefers to share his chirps with a wider audience, but he also thinks it’s pretty funny to have the locker room erupt because he and Sanya are debating whether to go to the banya today or tomorrow, or which flavor of jam is better in tea.</p><p>(It’s raspberry, obviously, but Sanya is a heathen who prefers peach. Sasha can’t <em>not</em> smack his ass with a towel for that.)</p><p>Sanya is close enough to Sasha in age that with Greenie getting to play up with them most of the season, Sasha suddenly finds himself with a group of close friends on his team.</p><p>Brooks Laich starts to hang out with them more, too, as the season progresses, and is quickly christened Batya, leading to endless complaints from Greenie that he wants a cool Russian nickname.</p><p>(Neither Sasha nor Sanya tell him that they call him Misha behind his back; he’s already cocky enough, and he’d be insufferable if he found out.)</p><p>Nicklas Backström, however, does not come to Washington during Sasha’s second season. He tries and fails not to be disappointed; it’s not even because Sasha found Backström’s scent so alluring.</p><p>Or, okay, not <em>only</em>that; Backström is also, as Sasha has discovered, incredibly talented at hockey. Sasha can already see where he would slot into their lineup, nearly drools at the thought of receiving one of Backström’s well-timed passes on the power play.</p><p>Sasha can hardly blame Backström for staying away, though. He knows precisely how intimidating it is to move to the States to play in the NHL, and the Capitals aren’t exactly making a compelling argument, either.</p><p>They’re no better than the year before, and the season goes much the same way as Sasha’s first did—with Sasha and a few other teammates playing great hockey, but not great enough to drag the team to a playoff position in the standings.</p><p>Making the All-Star Game is a pleasant surprise, but it also throws a wrench in his planned rut schedule—the Capitals had no games that week. Instead, the team doctors tweak his suppressant schedule, and he ruts three weeks later, when they have a five-day break between games.</p><p>He plays the last game before his rut hits at home against the Rangers, deeper into pre-rut than he’s ever been while playing; somehow, he manages to get through twenty-five minutes of ice time, and even scores a goal. There aren’t any omegas on the Rangers, but there are a handful of alphas—Jagr, obviously, and that fucker Sean Avery, who won’t stop saying shit to Sasha on the ice.</p><p>New York ends up winning, three up over the Caps’ two, and Sasha wishes he wasn’t so impressed by all three of Jagr’s assists, but honestly—it was pretty hot, and he’s secure enough as an alpha to admit he's a little boned up about it.</p><p>He’s a little boned up, period. He’s practically in rut already, so he rushes through stripping his gear off, doesn’t bother with a shower; revels in the stench of his athleticism. Sasha roughly swipes a towel over himself to dry the worst of his sweat and changes into the extra sweatpants he brought so that he wouldn’t have to put his suit back on.</p><p>Some person with a clipboard and Caps lanyard catches Sasha on his way out, informs him that the rut service omega will meet him at his house. Sasha would feel bad for how brusque he is, since he normally tries to be friendly with the team staff, but he only has enough patience to give her a quick, “Thanks!” as he hustles out to his car.</p><p>The omega they send is male this time. Sasha has almost no experience with male omegas, but he’s always been an eager student when it comes to sex. The omega’s name is Josh, which makes Sasha laugh with how bland Americans are, but he gets distracted quickly enough.</p><p>Josh isn’t as big as Sasha—few people are—and he’s only lightly muscled, like he works out but more for aesthetics than pure strength. Still, he’s able to push back against Sasha, which is a new experience, and one Sasha finds he’s rather partial to.</p><p>They fuck a lot, obviously, all over the house and in all kinds of positions, and Sasha experiments with giving blowjobs, when he’s lucid enough, and gets really good at giving reach-arounds, even when he’s rut-drunk and can barely focus beyond finding a tight, wet hole to blow his knot in.</p><p>They have a good time, but Sasha does find himself wishing, when he reflects on it, that Josh had pushed back a little more, been a little more demanding. American omegas are so . . . bashful; almost demure. Sasha thinks he’d like to experience his rut with a more demanding omega, who would be upfront about what they want, give him instructions, make him prove himself.</p><p>In the meantime, Sasha has more hockey games to lose; he barely makes the plane to Tampa Bay on time. The end of his rut leaves him just enough time to shower, throw on a clean suit, and grab a box of Power Bars on his way out the door. Luckily, he keeps a case of Gatorade in the trunk of his car for moments like these, so he can rehydrate as he drives.</p><p>He conks out on the plane, ignores Sanya and Greenie pestering him to play cards, gives Batya a tired smile of thanks when he gently shakes Sasha awake once they’ve landed.</p><p>Sasha plays another twenty-five minutes that night, and gets exactly zero points to show for it by the time they lose in the shootout.</p><p>The rest of the season is just more of the same. Sasha has fun when he can, which is most of the time, but even he is starting to get sick of playing to a mostly empty arena.</p><p>So, like last year, he visits his favorite banya all the time, continues to try every Russian restaurant within an hour drive of his house until he finds one whose borscht doesn't make him wince, calls his parents and his brother as much as he can, and bothers Sanya pretty much constantly, desperate for (Russian) attention and affection.</p><p>Sanya's a beta, so he doesn't make Sasha's instincts go crazy, but he makes a good substitute for the time being, lets Sasha bring him an extra blanket when they're camped out on his couch playing COD, snuggles in even if he rolls his eyes about it.</p><p>Sanya lets Sasha drape himself all over Sanya, too, which Sasha appreciates; betas don't have the same level of need for tactile physical affection, but Sanya's good naturedly long-suffering about it. Sanya also isn't shy about telling Sasha to fuck off when he's getting to be too much; Sasha figures out his next rut might be approaching when Sanya tells him for the third day in a row, "Stop fucking hovering, and put these fucking blankets off me, I’m already sweating, you asshole."</p><p>Sanya isn't willing to ride out Sasha's rut with him, though. Not that Sasha minds; he's got three fleshlights and a literal half-gallon jug of lube, plus some fake omega pheromones, which do the job in a pinch. The Caps have relaxed their control over his rut schedule a little, but he could still call their heat service. He doesn’t want to, though; the American omegas are too demure and don’t like to even negotiate their limits. Plus, whenever it comes up in the locker room, it doesn’t play well, and Sasha is nothing if not conscious about needing the team to be behind him for when he’s eventually named captain.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>That second season is more fun, sure, but the team isn’t any better; it certainly ends with more of a whimper than a bang. They get the same number of points in the season as they did Sasha’s first year, miss the playoffs again, still can’t get butts in seats at their home arena. Sasha tries not to let it get to him, to let it roll off him like water on a duck’s back, but he’s only so successful. Especially when Crosby’s Penguins, now featuring Malkin, suddenly manage to scrape together enough wins to make the playoffs. Alex watches from Russia as they lose in the first round and tries not to feel too gleeful. He’s only moderately successful.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>Sasha’s third season is already looking up while he’s still in Russia, when he hears that the Swedish rookie whose name he mangled at last year’s draft will be reporting to Washington for training camp.</p><p>After he hears that, Sasha spends the rest of his summer alternately trying to remember Backström's scent, and then—after he goes for a hike with his parents and they happen to cross some wild lilies-of-the-valley growing by the path—trying to forget it.</p><p>Sasha wants to know what else Backström smells like; what underlays the floral notes, how it changes when he's angry and happy and fierce. Sasha has seen clips of Backström's highlight reel—he plays fierce, determined. Sasha wants to know what he smells like just before he grits his teeth and carries his team on his back to victory, what he smells like during the joyous celebrations that follow.</p><p>He distracts himself by sinking into time with his family. It's nice to not be so bone-tired all the time, beaten down from the unyielding game pace of the NHL, the mental stress and exhaustion of struggling to translate everything around him.</p><p>He takes advantage of feeling so rested by lazing around the house he bought for his parents, eating Mama's pelmeni and drinking vodka with Papa and putting his brother in a headlock occasionally. He visits his other big brother, too—goes and sits by Sergei's grave like he does every time he's home, tells his oldest brother all about his life now, how all Sergei's encouragement and support and the hard work he put into helping Sasha has paid off. He thinks—no, he knows, because Mama and Papa and Mikhail have told him often enough, and he remembers Sergei well enough himself: Sergei would be proud of Sasha, <em>is</em> proud of Sasha, wherever he's watching games from.</p><p>It's nice to go back to all his favorite Moscow clubs, to be surrounded by people who appreciate his stellar fashion sense instead of chirping him for it (heathens), to know exactly how to approach an omega he wants to fuck, how to talk to them without offending. (Russian omegas, unlike American ones, do not take offers of one-night stands as an implicit comment on their virtue—or lack thereof.)</p><p>He lazes the first month of the summer away like that, before he's ready to ramp his training back up—and then he does everything he was already doing, just adding more and more time in the gym to his schedule, and eating more and more protein as he does.</p><p>By the time the end of August rolls around, Sasha's gone through his summer rut and is feeling ready to leave Mатушка Россия. As nice as it has been to let his parents baby him while he's home, their well-intentioned questions have started to grate. Mama is the definition of a take-no-shit alpha, and she shows her love through constant feeding and attention, wanting to know if Sasha is too hot, too cold, hungry, tired, does he want a blanket, does he want her to make more borscht to freeze so he can take a little cooler full of it back to the States with him—after all, what is the point of a professional athlete's salary if not to pay bribes to customs officials so you can have a backup stash of Mama's borscht for in case you get homesick, Sashenka?</p><p>He bites his tongue a lot, his last week at their Moscow dacha.</p><p>(He'd tried to tell Mama to back off and that he was his own alpha exactly once, thirteen years old and full of himself, high off discovering what his dick could really do since he'd presented. It was the day after his pseudo-rut, nothing more than one day of constantly jerking it in order to prepare him for the real thing in six months. He'd still been a little come-dumb the next day, convinced he was hot shit now that his knot had popped and he'd be able to swing it around the locker room. He had learned, very quickly and in no uncertain terms, to never swing his knot around in his mama's house, no matter how metaphorically. He may have been an alpha, but she was still his alpha—and more than that, she was Tatyana Ovechkina, she was <em>Mama</em>: she had brought him into this world and she could take him right back out of it.)</p><p>(Sasha had not swung his dick around in the locker room, either, after that dressing down.)</p><p>(Well, not very much. And he'd outgrown such childish posturing by the time he turned pro.)</p><p>( . . . Mostly.)</p><p>What Sasha knows he needs is to get back to DC and get Sanya to smack some sense into him before he has to face Backström again. He knows that he’ll make an idiot of himself if left to his own devices; he desperately does not want to scare Backström off before the season even starts. He knows he’ll be enough to deal with during the season; better to ease Backström into how intense Sasha can be slowly, so he'll be emotionally attached to him by the time he realizes how <em>ridiculous</em> Sasha is.</p><p>It worked on Sanya, after all.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Backström is already in DC when Sasha arrives. He'd been there early for rookie camp like everyone else who hadn't been on the roster last season, trying to get ice time with the skills coaches and to start building emotional bonds with the other guys.</p><p>Sasha realizes he should have come early, too, because by the time he gets to DC, Backström has already moved in with Nylander. Sasha doesn’t even get the chance to offer to share with him.</p><p>It's probably for the best; an unbonded alpha sharing a house with an unbonded omega would probably be too much for NHL sensibilities. Sasha doesn’t need any more snide commentary about his life in American newspapers, especially couched in the puritanical phrases Americans use because they are <em>so weird</em> about dynamics.</p><p>Still, Sasha walks into the practice rink excited—a little tired and jet-lagged from the flight, but energetic nonetheless.</p><p>And there it is, when he first walks in: the hint of lily.</p><p>He follows the faint scent down the familiar steps to the locker room.</p><p>Roughly half the team is there already. Sasha forces his senses to stop zeroing in on Backström and finds Sanya instead, jumps him from behind, stalking quietly and then pouncing before Sanya and his dumb beta nose even know he's entered the room.</p><p>Sanya startles violently, which is always gratifying, and lets loose a loud stream of Russian curses. Sasha responds in kind, grin fixed on his face as he tells Sanya exactly where he can stick his opinions of Alex, Alex's mother, and their family dog, before hugging him again and burying his nose against Sanya's neck, thoroughly scenting him and then just rubbing his stubble all over his sensitive neck to make Sanya whine and push him away with a face-wash. Sasha grins some more, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and looks around the room for who to target next.</p><p>Sasha feints left like he's gonna detour toward Ollie on the way to his own stall, cackling when Ollie puts up a hand preemptively to ward him off, reaching for the sock tape with his other hand. For a goalie, he sure does love using projectiles to deter Sasha.</p><p>Sasha laughs some more and finally makes it to his stall. He sets his bag down and starts rearranging all his gear, getting it to smell like him again after a summer away.</p><p>Once his locker smells nominally like him (it'll be more effective when he rolls around in it after practice when he’s all sweaty, which he will absolutely do no matter how much Sanya complains that it’s gross), Sasha lets himself pay attention to the wider room again, widening his focus outside his own little bubble. He lets the scents filter in last, always wary of that initial adjustment period. Some guys aren’t here anymore and won’t be back; at the same time, there are new scents to integrate, too, beyond just Backström's weirdly compelling one.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>The first day of camp, Nicklas Backström still looks like he’s never seen a comb in his life. He’s got messy, shoulder-length hair, piercing blue eyes, and a t-shirt declaring “Your girlfriend wears my hockey jersey,” which Sasha is determined to steal.</p><p>He spends practice almost in silence, only whispering the occasional question to Nyls, the older Swede the Caps picked up for exactly this purpose. He also feeds Sasha crisp, perfect passes every time they're paired together for drills.</p><p>Sasha makes sure to talk to Backström in the locker room, that first day of camp. He feels—bouncy, full of air, high off being around his team and on the ice and the sweet-smelling passes Backström kept feeding him during drills.</p><p>The equipment staff had given Backström a stall right next to Nylander. The offseason acquisition had good hands and, judging by the picture frame he'd already given pride of place in his stall, a huge family of adorable kids. The fact that he agreed to billet Backström—despite, again, his hoard of blond children, too many for Sasha to count at first glance—can't have hurt Washington's value of him.</p><p>Luckily for Sasha, his stall isn't far from theirs; he bounds over to where they’re talking, heads ducked together, greeting teammates boisterously on his way.</p><p>"Hi, Swedes!" Sasha chirps once he’s standing in front of them. "Hi! My name Alex, can call me Sasha, though. You Nyls, right? And rookie, I call your name at draft? Welcome to Caps hockey!"</p><p>It seemed Alex could control either his legs or his voice; whatever, it would do Backström good to get acclimated to Alex's energy levels early on in their tenure.</p><p>"Hello, Sasha," Nyls said calmly. "Yes, my name's Michael, but sure, you can call me Nyls. This," and here he gestured to Backström, "is Nicklas Backström; he doesn't speak much English yet."</p><p>Sasha could <em>hear</em> the umlauts, the way Nyls pronounced Backström's name. It did not sound remotely close to what Alex had blustered his way through at the draft.</p><p>"I think I say your name wrong at draft," he told Backström, apologetic. "Sorry for this, I do better. How you prefer to be called?"</p><p>He waited a beat, but Backström didn't seem inclined to answer—and it wasn't because he wasn't following what Sasha said. Alex wasn't sure how he knew that, exactly, but something in Backström's face told him.</p><p>Well, time to elaborate, then. "In Russia, have many different nicknames for friends! Like me, Aleksandr, can be Alex, Sasha, Sanya, Sashenka, Shurik, lots more! For Nikolai—is how we say Nicklas—can be Nik, Niko, Nikushka, Kolya, Kola—or we could do by last name, hmm let's see—Becky, Backy," Sasha kept going, listing progressively more diminutive Russian nicknames.</p><p>Nyls had already physically turned away from their conversation, paying attention only to his gear as he stripped out of it, and Sasha kind of expected Backström to do the same, only—Backström just waited, letting Sasha get through all the potential nicknames—and there were a lot—before finally running out of steam.</p><p>It was weird—everyone on the team knew to cut Sasha off early, before he really got going, if they wanted to get a word in edgewise. Sasha liked it, that Backström didn't butt in, that instead he waited for Sasha to come to a stop naturally.</p><p>Oh, well. Backström would learn.</p><p>(Sasha may have gotten somewhat—creative, as he kept listing options; it was fun, and he was curious to see when Backström would finally lose his patience and stop him, but—he didn't. He actually ran out of bizarre Russian nicknames first, which—that had literally never happened to him before. He hadn't though it was possible.)</p><p>"My friends call me Nicke," Backström—no, Nickie—finally said. His voice was very quiet, and Sasha found himself automatically leaning in to catch it, lowering his own volume to match.</p><p>"Okay, Nickie!" he whisper-yelled, grinning widely. "I like this! Nickie is good nickname, hah, <em>nickname,</em> get it, Nickie?"</p><p>Nickie clearly got it, but he didn't deign to laugh, or even smile. Sasha vowed to be funnier, the next time he tried to make a joke.</p><p>"Nick<em>e,"</em> Nicky said, stressing the last syllable.</p><p>"Nickie!" Sasha repeated back.</p><p>"Nick<em>e,"</em> Nicky said again.</p><p>"Nicki?" Alex tried.</p><p>"Nick<em>e," </em>Nicki said.</p><p>"Nicky," Sasha tried.</p><p>"Nick<em>e," </em>Nickie said, but before Sasha could try again—</p><p>"Maybe we should pick this back up later, eh boys?" Nyls interrupted, Dad Voice firmly engaged. "I've got kids to feed, and a rookie to settle in."</p><p>"But I'm help settle rookie, we having moment here! Why you have to interrupt?" Sasha protests, gesturing between himself and Nicky, who had—already turned around, his back to Sasha as he started arranging his gear in his stall.</p><p>Huh. Okay then. Evidently Nicky was an omega who had no qualms about expressing his opinions to alphas, and would make it clear to Alex when his attention was welcome.</p><p>Sasha shrugged, turned away from Nyls without waiting for a reply, and headed back to his own stall to change.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>Backström’s still covered in a healthy layer of baby fat; the second day of camp, the training staff make him wear a weight vest.</p><p>Sasha didn't even need to see Nicky's bitchy expression to know that it's a fucked up thing for them to do. Backström hasn't even been here two weeks yet, but apparently it's been long enough for the coaching staff to decide he needs to lose fifteen pounds.</p><p>Sasha may be dumb about international omega social mores or whatever, but he's pretty sure calling an omega fat is universally derided—unless it’s meant as a compliment in the midst of heat, like in a let-me-breed-you-up context.</p><p><em>And </em>Nicky's not even fat! <em>And</em> if he <em>were</em>, it wouldn't matter!</p><p>He still skates like a goddamn maniac, can still dangle and pass right to Sasha's tape without looking, making it seem easy, and it's literally no one's business but his own, and sometimes maybe his doctor's, how much he weighs and what his body looks like. <em>Duh</em>.</p><p>Oh, and Sasha might be ignorant/naïve/have pissed of a bunch of omegas while in America, but even he'd never say something like this; even he knows how many different bullshit pressures are on omegas—especially male omegas—to conform to certain standards of beauty, to make themselves soft and pretty and small and everything hockey players aren't supposed to be, in order to appeal to alphas.</p><p>But Backström kicks ass in practice that day, somehow skating <em>even faster</em> than usual despite the weighted vest. He's extra super duper flushed post-practice, and Sasha has an even harder time than usual burying the urge to stick his face right in the crook of Nicky's neck and breathe him in, tangle apart the threads of his scent, maybe leave some of his own there too.</p><p>All the boys wolf whistle and congratulate Nicky, twisting up towels to thwack his ass like they'd do any other guy on the team. Nicky's flush from the workout fades, but his cheeks and ears stay pinked up, like he's quietly, subtly pleased at the attention and praise of his teammates, proud of how well he performed.</p><p>God, Sasha bets he makes the same exact face when he's nesting up before his heat, would go sweetly pleased under his alpha's praise, though without getting overwhelmed by it—still maintaining that vicious undercurrent, still ready to snap at the slightest provocation.</p><p>Sasha sternly tells his dick not to chub up in his shorts, and goes to take a cold shower.</p><p>He's still thinking about it, though, when he gets home that night. He's been narrowly avoiding fantasizing about Nicky when he jerks off lately; hasn't been watching his usual porn ever since his neighbors tattled to his Mama that he was playing it on his flatscreen TV—which, it wasn't <em>his</em> fault his stupid laptop has such a small screen, okay—and so what if he didn't have curtains; if they didn't like it they could've looked away—just, did they really have to call his <em>Mama</em> about it? So—he doesn't watch much porn, these days.</p><p>This time, though, Sasha can't stop the direction his fantasies take, and he jerks off thinking about Nicky—about Nicky’s sharp teeth and sharp comments and what Nicky would look like building a nest in Sasha’s room . . . and then ruins it by feeling guilty immediately after. He spends the rest of the night cleaning and doing laundry and, when that doesn’t work, box jumps in the basement until his legs shake.</p><p>Looking back, Sasha is pretty sure that was the moment he started to fall in love with Nicklas Backström.</p><p><br/>
</p>
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</p><p>The next day, weight vest is back in its dusty corner by the squat rack. Nicke never says a word about it, but he radiates smug satisfaction all through practice.</p><p><br/>
</p>
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</p><p>There still aren't very many guys Sasha’s age on the team, but the ones that are there click together seamlessly. Sasha was right, last season, to think Backström would fit in well—he does, even better than Sasha’d imagined. He feels like he’s known Nicky for years, not weeks.</p><p>The Young Guns, as the fans soon dub them, hang out all the time. Sasha is finally old enough to drink legally in this ass-backwards country, but Backström isn’t, so they don’t go out to bars or clubs much, mostly stay home and get drunk together instead.</p><p>Greenie will bring over some shitty Canadian beer, indistinguishable from horse piss, and Sasha will pull a bottle of vodka out of his imported stash and join Sanya in trying to convince Nicky to have a glass, telling him it’ll put some hair on his chest.</p><p>Nicky will smile that wicked little smile he gets when he’s pretending to be above their antics but is secretly enjoying them, and he’ll take a small sip from Sasha’s glass and sputter and cough before he pulls out a tin of his precious snus and snags one of Greenie’s empties to spit into, and Sasha will spend the rest of the night pressing his lips to exactly the same spot Nicky had, pretending he can tell the difference, pretending that he’s not head-over-heels in love with this rookie he barely knows.</p><p>One end of his couch starts to smell faintly of lilies-of-the-valley, and Sasha would never admit it, but it’s fast becoming his favorite spot to nap.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>So begins Sasha’s third year in the NHL: good hockey, better friends, and three wins to start the season.</p><p>Of course, that’s when everything goes to shit.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>After those first three wins, they go on what feels like an abso-fucking-lutely <em>endless</em> losing streak. Sasha’s no stranger to losing hockey games by this point in time, but he was naïve enough to expect they’d be better this year.</p><p>If things were only going wrong on the ice, that’d be one thing, but then, at the same time, Sasha’s instincts decide to start going totally haywire.</p><p>He’s constantly resisting the urge to provide for Nicky, never mind that Nicky is a fully capable adult with a paycheck the same size as Sasha’s and absolutely no desire for Sasha to baby him.</p><p>Sanya is the only thing keeping Sasha sane, two weeks into the regular season. Sanya’s got experience living with a hormonal alpha, so he doesn’t mind letting Sasha wrestle him to the living room floor and scent-mark the shit out of him, and placidly accepts the Gatorades Sasha pushes on him after games.</p><p>He still extensively and ruthlessly chirps Sasha for it, obviously, but he does it in Russian, so no one else joins in. Sasha considers it a fair trade.</p><p>Nicky is still so <em>present</em> to Sasha, though. It’s like his scent is stuck in Sasha’s nose, somehow, and he doesn’t mind it, but it makes it so much harder for Sasha to control himself.</p><p>Nicky’s scent isn’t even that strong, either—unlike Josh’s honeysuckle-and-vanilla smell, which had clung to Sasha for days after his rut—but it’s all the more compelling for it, and it’s still only the beginning of Sasha's Nicky Problem.</p><p>Nicklas—with his power and muscle and scent and beautiful, wonderful bitchface—is everything Sasha’s been looking for in an omega, is all, and now he’s suddenly just <em>there</em> all the time. Sasha’s played with and against omegas before, at every level of hockey, and he’s never been affected like this.</p><p>Nicky is so solid, so <em>thick</em>, so mean and vicious when he’s provoked by dumbassery from the media, from coaches, teammates; anyone and everyone. He’s so talented with a puck, so good at getting it to Sasha’s tape at just the right moment—Sasha never stood a chance.</p><p>Sasha is also never, ever, under any condition, going to make a move on Nicky. Obviously.</p><p>He learned a lot of what he knows about being a good alpha from Mama, but he learned just as much, if not more, from Papa. Mama told him to listen; Papa showed him how to. And once Sasha had mastered that, Papa started telling him about what it was like to be an omega, how to help them become comfortable, how to encourage them to share their thoughts.</p><p>Sasha knows how tough it can be for omegas, and how tough it was for him to adjust to North American attitudes regarding dynamics—and Sasha is observant.</p><p>Most people assume Sasha doesn’t pay attention, because he’s loud and brash and an alpha, but his ears and his eyes work just fine. He’s conscious of which teammates are quiet in the locker room because they’re naturally shy and need someone loud to deflect attention away from them, and which ones are just hesitant and need a big, gregarious bear of an alpha to bound up to them and bring them into the fold.</p><p>Sasha’s English continues to be a work in progress, but he understands way more than he knows how to say, more than most people realize. He hears the shit reporters and talking heads spew about omegas being in the league, knows what kinds of backwards opinions so many commentators and fans have, functionally identical to the bullshit arguments they made about alphas not belonging in professional sports back when Mama still played.</p><p>He’s proud of Nicky for not letting it get to him, even though Sasha has nothing to do with it, no real justification for the pride he feels at Nicky’s strength of character.</p><p>Sasha does what he can, and uses every bullshit question about dynamics affecting the locker room to call out the double standards. He’d do it no matter what, because it’s the right thing to do, but the quirk at the corner of Nicky’s mouth each time Sasha unloads on a reporter makes it that much sweeter.</p><p>But . . . Sasha has played with omegas before (in the KHL, at Worlds, at the Olympics, as a kid before so many of them dropped out, even in the NHL for a hot sec before Witter got traded at the deadline), but either they’d been bonded already, to someone else, or Sasha’d been too young to care.</p><p>It’s excellent, obviously, that omegas are starting to make inroads into pro sports this past decade, just like alphas did two decades ago, but it also means that the omegas currently playing have to put up with a ton of extra bullshit. Work twice as hard, be twice as good as anyone else, just to get half the credit. It’s fucked up, and Sasha makes a point of saying so, since omegas like Nicky would obviously get skewered if they tried to.</p><p>Yeah, Sasha has A Nicky Problem. But he can’t be too upset about it, not when Nicky’s sweet scent belies the scowls he throws Sasha’s way.</p><p><br/>
</p>
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</p><p>The Caps have just gotten their asses handed to them by <em>the Flyers</em>, Nicky’s in the middle of a scoring drought, and Sasha has spent the past twenty minutes listening to reporters ask shitty questions with worse implications.</p><p>Sasha had overheard one reporter actually ask Nicky if his being an unbonded omega on a team with unbonded alphas was affecting his play, which was laughable—as if Nicky was, what, pining after Sasha?—though Sasha did have to give the reporter points for having enough courage to sack up and ask about it directly.</p><p>The mood in the room is still tense, even after the reporters have cleared out, so Sasha does the only thing he can: makes a fool of himself to break the tension. He finishes stripping off his sweaty gear and Under Armour, wraps a towel around his hips, and starts plodding towards the showers.</p><p>He takes the long way around the room to get there, because it takes him past Nicky’s stall. Just before Sasha reaches Nicky, he lets his foot catch on the skate Schultzy has helpfully left right in the middle of his path, and Sasha tumbles dramatically down to the floor, letting out a little yip of surprise on the way.</p><p>He lays on his back and looks up at the ceiling, and waits. Sure enough, it’s only seconds before Nicky’s face swims into view, his expression distinctly unamused.</p><p>Sasha tries to control his grin, and mostly fails. “Oh no!” he gasps. “Nicky, I’ve fallen for you!”</p><p>“Get up.” Nicky says, voice flat and eyes murderous, but Sasha can see his lips twitch with the effort of holding a straight face.</p><p>“You not gonna help?” Sasha whines plaintively, sticking an arm straight up above himself, hand clutching at empty air.</p><p>“Ugh.” Nicky rolls his eyes, but he also grasps Sasha’s proffered hand in his firm grip and pulls so hard that Sasha overbalances and stumbles right into Nicky’s personal space.</p><p>He decides to go with it. “Mmm, Nicky, smell so good!” Sasha says, loud enough to carry. “How I’m ever gonna be in control with you here, so distracting!!!!”</p><p>Alex sneaks a look around the room, checking responses—some of the betas look wary, like they’re not sure if this is play or not—but Clarkie’s starting to chuckle, clueing everyone else in on the joke.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Nicky says, so deadpan that Sasha knows he’s about to get verbally obliterated, “I’ve never had that issue, since you smell like the wrong end of an <em>älg.”</em></p><p>Sasha doesn’t know what an <em>älg</em> is, but from the way Nylander cracks up on the other side of the room, he knows it’s nothing good.</p><p>“Oh, so you not want me do this?” Sasha chirps, and starts rubbing his sweaty hair and face all over the scent glands at Nicky’s neck. Normally it’d be rude to do without first asking permission, but since they’re all about to shower together, Sasha figures it’s fine. He’s a little sad about it, actually—even covered in sweat and rank gear-stink, Nicky’s scent still cuts through the musk of Sasha’s own, stronger and more potent the more Alex stimulates Nicky’s scent glands. The combination of may-lilies and Sasha’s base note of musk is a lot more pleasant than Sasha would’ve expected, if he had <em>ever</em> let himself think about it.</p><p>“Ew, you brute.” Nicky’s hands scrabble at him, but he doesn’t put any force behind it. Still, Sasha disentangles himself when Nicke tells him, “Go shower, you stink.”</p><p>Nicky’s smiling as he says it, though, and that warms Sasha from head to toe, keeps him grinning long after he's left the locker room.</p><p><br/>
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<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>It’s not until later that night, trying to distract himself from ruminating on the loss, that he notices Nicky had slipped out of the locker room while Sasha was enjoying his leisurely shower. He hadn’t showered before leaving.</p><p><em>Huh,</em> Sasha thinks. The knowledge settles warm in his stomach, keeps him warm all night long. He falls asleep before he can dissect the idea too much, no longer noticing the chill that’d been keeping him up before.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nyls gets injured during a particularly chippy game against the Penguins later in the week, and leaves the ice before the buzzer sounds. It's nothing major, a tweaked ankle or something, but he's already been checked out by the trainers and cleared to go home by the time the rest of the team finishes the period, so he's headed out early. A trainer fills Nicky in on all of this when they're back in the locker room at the end of the third, and Sasha just so happens to be close enough to overhear.</p><p>Sasha tries not to look too eager when Nicke approaches him after.</p><p>"Nyls okay?" he asks Nicky, who nods. "Good!" Sasha nods back, grinning, and waits patiently for Nicky to collect his thoughts.</p><p>"Did you drive today?" Nicky asks. Sasha is always struck by how soft his voice is off the ice. On it, he yells as much as anyone—more than, usually, telling guys to pass and shoot and deke and skate and generally just <em>be less terrible</em>.</p><p>Sasha nods, not bothering to voice his answer. Nicke is so sparse with his words, chooses them so carefully, like he has to ration them—it makes Sasha want to do the same. Sometimes.</p><p>"Would you be able to give me a ride back to Nyls's? He already went home," Nicky says hesitantly, like there's literally anything he could ask of Sasha that Sasha wouldn't agree to in an instant.</p><p>"Yes, happy to do this, Nicky!" Sasha says, toning himself down a little, trying not to grin too much. Nicky looks like he'd startle if Sasha exhaled too forcefully, never mind danced and screamed and shouted like he wants to.</p><p>(He gets to do something for Nicke! <em>Nicke asked Sasha to do something for him!!!</em>)</p><p>When they get to Sasha's car, he opens Nicky's door for him, of course, and barely restrains himself from physically buckling Nicky in, too; Sasha only manages to deny the urge because, when he hesitantly starts to reach for the belt strap, Nicke glares at him murderously. Sasha decides discretion is the better part of valor, and rushes around to his own side of the car so that he's able to watch Nicky buckle himself in, capable in this as he is everything.</p><p>Sasha turns the key in the ignition, and Nicky jumps, startled at the loud burst of Russian techno that blares from the car speakers. Nicky punches the radio off before Sasha has fully registered the movement, and then Nicky seems to realize what he's done and looks at Sasha with his mouth set in a mullish line. Sasha smiles warmly at Nicky and thanks him, but Nicky still curls himself up small against the seat and rests his forehead on the window, like he's trying to be unobtrusive.</p><p>Sasha lasts about thirty seconds or so after he pulls out onto the main road before he disregards everything he'd been thinking earlier about Nicky making him less loquacious. The car is so so quiet, in the absence of the hometown crowd and Alex's admittedly jarring pre-game playlist, and Nicky looks so uncomfortable, curled up tight like he's scared to take up space in an alpha's car, that Sasha has no choice but to open his mouth and try to pull Nicke out of his shell.</p><p>Sasha starts ranting about the Pens, and Malkin, and the refs, and the city of Pittsburgh—in addition to the entire state of Pennsylvania and also the whole goddamn country, this fucking "United States" of America—and their bullshit ideas about what does and does not constitute a slash. It definitely does not have anything at all to do with the cut marring one side of Nicky's face, a thin line of red standing out starkly on his perfect, chubby cheek.</p><p>Nicke gets tired of Sasha's bullshit halfway to Nyls's house. His voice is barely audible over Sasha's yelling, but Sasha still snaps his mouth shut the second he sees Nicke's open.</p><p>In his deceptively soft voice, Nicke asks, “Do you ever do anything except whine like a little bitch?”</p><p>Sasha takes a moment to think about it, because he always gives careful consideration to whatever Nicke says.</p><p>“Sometimes I whine like <em>big</em> bitch,” he suggests, shrugging.</p><p>Nicke smiles faintly, and Sasha feels proud.</p><p><em>I could fall in love with you so easily,</em> he thinks, <em>and maybe I am already halfway there?</em>—but all of that he keeps to himself.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>Sasha is having Instincts™. They are . . . difficult to deal with.</p><p>He wants to wrap Nicky in blankets—or, no, he wants to <em>buy</em> Nicky a ton of blankets, and let Nicky wrap them both up in all the blankets, and get a carful of groceries and throw pillows and present them to Nicky, have him choose the best ones to make them a safe little nest, pick a dark spot in Sasha’s big, sprawling, too-empty house and turn it into a den.</p><p>But more than any of that, he wants Nicky to want Sasha to do all of that. He wants to do whatever Nicke wants him to do.</p><p>Right now, Nicky doesn’t want him to do anything like that, so Sasha won’t. But he still has a guest room full of pillows and blankets and non-perishable food items, and thank god for Sanya, who will long-sufferingly put up with Sasha disappearing every ten minutes during movie nights and returning with a different pillow or blanket for Sanya to cursorily examine and dismiss—though sometimes, very rarely, Sanya will deign to accept whichever offering Sasha has brought him, will swap out the pillow he’d been leaning against and let Sasha stick a new one behind him, will let Sasha plump it up for him before he leans back and says, “Good. Thanks,” and Sasha will preen and strut around the house the rest of the day.</p><p>And he really <em>doesn’t</em> have feelings for Sanya, no matter how much Greenie tries to chirp them about it. Sasha really ought to send Sanya's alpha sister a fruit basket or something; Sanya undoubtedly had to deal with way weirder shit while she went through puberty and dealt with fluctuating hormones and weird sibling-family-<em>pack</em> protection urges, so he accepts Sasha’s misplaced emotions placidly.</p><p>And it’s not like Sasha isn’t into betas—or, well, he’s not usually, but he certainly wouldn’t say no if Sanya offered to spend Sasha’s winter rut together—but Sanya isn’t about that, and frankly, Sasha doesn’t blame him. Sanya really is just like a brother to him, and Sasha’s feelings are pretty platonic. They certainly would <em>not</em> make a good bonded pair.</p><p>Sanya does make an excellent substitute, though.</p><p>So Sasha tries not to impose his affections on Nicke, focuses instead on getting to know him. They’re teammates! Sasha thinks they could be friends, too. It’s just gonna take a little work.</p><p>Sasha is totally willing to put in the work—not in a creepy way, where he’s expecting Nicky to just fall onto his knot at the end of it as a reward for treating him like a human being. He genuinely wants Nicke happy, whatever that means, whatever that takes. That’s his goal.</p><p>And what makes Nicke happy is: proving people wrong. Proving <em>authority figures</em> wrong. (Thank god Clarkie got named captain while the Caps wait for Sasha to mature.) Swedish snus. (Sasha definitely does not have a stockpile of it in his guest room, and definitely does not keep a fresh tin of it in his back pocket during road trips, just in case of emergency. He hasn’t needed it yet, because Nicky is incredibly responsible and a big boy who can provide for himself, but Sasha likes to be ready just in case. Even though Nicke makes the best bitchy face when he’s hankering for a nicotine fix.)</p><p>Nicke also likes: Swedish food, and speaking the Swedish language. He likes when his nickname is pronounced correctly, which Sasha is bribing the Nylander children to teach him how to do, but it’s slow going, because he rarely sees them without Nicke being around. (He's making decent progress, though, based on the way Nicke's resting bitch face eases slightly when Sasha calls his name these days.)</p><p>Speaking of the Nylander children, Nicke likes kicking their asses at ping-pong, and ‘chel, and Mario Kart, and everything else. He likes creative, terrifying chirps that make Alex double over with laughter and once got an opposing defenseman to stop trying to strip Nicke of the puck to ask, “Wha?”</p><p>(Nicke scored, and Sasha got a semi. He bought six blankets on his way home from the game. It would've been closer to fifteen, but the store closed before he could fit any more in his cart.)</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>Sasha didn’t find out about Nicke’s first heat until after it had already happened. Nyls came to practice one day, a little over a month into the season, and Nicke wasn’t with him. Luckily, Greenie asked, “Nick okay?” so that Sasha didn’t have to.</p><p>“Yeah, he’s good. Maintenance day,” Nyls said, like those were a normal thing for young guys to take, and not reserved for vets with chronic pain who were halfway to an opioid addiction. Nyls came farther into the room as he spoke, and Alex was hit by the remnants of Nicky’s heat-scent still clinging to Nyls, overlaying his neutral beta smell.</p><p>Sasha distantly clocked Brashear and Clarkie note, recognize, and dismiss Nicke’s scent, and the lack of obvious challenge from them was probably the only reason Sasha retained enough self-awareness to recognize the rumble building in his chest and stop it before it became an audible growl.</p><p>He spun on his heel quickly, digging in his bag for the spare mini Gatorade, purple flavor—Nicke’s favorite—that he kept next to the emergency snus, and thrust it at Sanya.</p><p>“Nicke’s in heat,” he explained in Russian. “Drink, please.”</p><p>Sanya cocked an eyebrow skeptically, not needing words to tell Sasha he thought he was full of shit, but he reached out to take the bottle, cracked the seal, and chugged the whole thing in one go.</p><p>Sasha exhaled. “Thank you,” he said, and took the empty from Sanya’s hand. He walked over to the recycling bin, every step deliberately calm, tossed the bottle, returned to his stall, and did his best to keep his breathing calm and still and on tempo as he finished changing into his gear.</p><p>Sasha hadn’t noticed the first heat’s approach, but he paid better attention after that. In retrospect, there had been signs, but Sasha hadn’t known what they were at the time.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>Sasha had a lot of anger as a kid. After his brother died, the grief was overwhelming—but as the grief became less all-encompassing, Sasha realized that just like the grief, his anger had its place—though ultimately, he needed to let go of the brunt of it, in order to move on with his life. It wasn't productive, to hold it in the front of his mind all the time. Seryozha wouldn't have wanted that, for him.</p><p>That's not to say he never gets angry, but he tries to let it pass through him, without lashing out while stuck in its grip—because he's a big alpha, and knows it can be scary to some people, to see that. Plus, while alphas may have a firmer hold in pro sports than omegas, that doesn't make their grasp any less tenuous. Sasha has to stay in control of his emotions, keep them in check, only express the joy—and he really is a joyous person, that's not faked—or every headline in the country will be questioning if alphas really belong in hockey. <em>Again</em>.</p><p>Nicke, as an omega, can't show any weakness—he has to walk the knife's edge between upset at a loss and "overly emotional" in order to avoid excessive speculation by the press on his heat cycle. Anger is rare to see from omegas in the public sphere—at least, it is when it's as strong as Nicke's. The press don't like it, necessarily, but they do respect it; anger is an emotion big tough hockey men are expected to feel. Anger they know how to write about.</p><p>But Sasha sees Nicke more than just when he's putting on his PR-approved face, and that's what he's really grateful to get to observe—Nicke in private. Nicke at home, Nicke in the showers after practice. Nicke in <em>Sasha’s house</em>, which is obviously the best place to see private-Nicke, because then Sasha can bring him things without their teammates chirping him for it.</p><p>Sasha tries not to give Nicke <em>too much</em>, because he respects Nicke's independence and bodily autonomy and ability to be a functional adult, but for a few days each month, he still finds himself grabbing an extra Gatorade from the fridge in the lounge on the way in to practice—purple, which Sasha always keeps around, even though he hates it—and dropping it off in Nicke's stall. He's always distantly confused by the impulse, but usually follows through on it without too much thought, because it just feels so <em>necessary</em>. And then every time, two days later like clockwork, Nicke will skip a day or two of practice to have his heat, and Sasha will think, <em>Ohhhh, so that's why</em>.</p><p>And when Nicke comes back, everyone will greet him with smiles and good-natured catcalls, and Sasha will hand him a purple Gatorade and be pleased to see that Nicke looks flushed and satisfied; glad Nicke's being well taken care of even if Sasha's not the one doing it.</p><p>Satisfaction, Sasha learns, looks just as good on Nicke as his resting bitch face. He’s so contrary to what North America’s expectations of omegas are, but he’s so <em>exactly right</em> for Sasha. Sasha can’t help but just feel . . . good. Good about just being near Nicke, smelling his sweet may-lily scent, the way it deepens when he takes Gatorades from Sasha.</p><p>Sasha knows <em>exactly</em> what Nicke’s heat smells like, so when Greenie comes into team breakfast smelling like Nicke, Sasha is up in his face, halfway to formally challenging him when Clarkie grabs the back of Sasha’s neck and gives him a shake.</p><p>“Sorry!” Sasha says, abashed now that he’s snapped out of it. He puts his hands up. “Did not expect—was surprised. I can control. I’m okay now.”</p><p>Clarkie steps back, but keeps his hand on the back of Sasha’s neck when he asks, "Nick's in heat?"</p><p>"Yep," says Greenie, who has already waved over the dynamics coach. Sasha <em>hates</em> the dynamics coach, and has trained himself to say, “Sorry, English bad,” and ignore everything the man says.</p><p>“Hm,” Coach says. He sits down and gestures for them to sit at the table. "We have to figure out how he's getting back—probably easiest to have him ride it out here, rather than have him travel with the team in this state."</p><p>Clarkie and Coach both glance at Sasha, who busies himself with his face in his bad American coffee and pretends he isn't eavesdropping.</p><p>Sasha knows it's futile to volunteer to take Nicke through his heat when they haven't signed the consent forms ahead of time, no matter how much he wants to, but—</p><p>"I can give hoodie?" Sasha interrupts what Coach is saying to Clarkie, feeling almost frantic with this overwhelming, urgent need to <em>help,</em> to do <em>something</em> to ease Nicke's heat, if he can't be there in person.</p><p>". . . What?" Clarkie finds his voice first, both him and Coach looking up at Sasha.</p><p>"Nicke can't have heat partner, right? Because no forms?" Sasha tries to explain his thought process, struggling to repress the urge to just whip off his sweatshirt (and maybe the rest of his clothes) right there in the hotel dining room and shove them at Coach to take to Nicke. "So I give hoodie, or—or practice gear, maybe? To help with—smell alpha?"</p><p>"The scent," Clarkie muses, catching on to Sasha's idea. He speaks with concerted calmness, like he's trying to get Sasha to stop twitching through, like, osmosis. "I think that's a great idea, Ovi. Would that be allowed, with the rules and stuff?" Clarkie looks to Coach to check, and gets a nod in return.</p><p>"Yeah," Coach agrees. "I can take it to him when I drop off the rest of the heat supplies in a little bit. If you wanna go grab a sweatshirt from your room and bring it back down, I'll be going to check on him once I've finished eating."</p><p>Sasha's nodding and turning to walk towards the elevators before Coach is finished speaking; returns triumphant with a duffel full of, well, basically all his dirty laundry—at least the stuff that didn't stink too badly. He's grateful that this has been a long roadie, so Sasha brought two bags and can fit what he'll need for the rest of the trip in the smaller of them.</p><p>Clarkie and Coach look a little startled when Sasha drops the bag at their feet proudly, but not even Coach, who has not been helpful in Sasha’s attempts to fit into North American dynamics and always tries to tell him he’s too boisterous for American omegas, comments on it.</p><p>Clarkie’s hand goes to the back of Sasha’s neck again and he says, “That’s good, kid,” and Sasha preens.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>Sasha lights it up in their game that night. Nicke's still stuck in the hotel, and certainly not even watching—but he <em>is</em> surrounded with Sasha's scent, and that fills Sasha with a gleeful, boundless energy.</p><p>Added to that: the dynamics coach, who seemed to despair of Sasha before this, tells him, “He seemed pleased about the laundry,” and right before the game, Sasha had gotten a text from Nicke. Just <em>thanks</em>, nothing else—but isn’t that enough?</p><p>Sasha gets a hat trick.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>Nicke rejoins the team in DC a few days later, his heat solidly in the rearview—which Sasha knows because he turns up at Sasha's place. He looks faintly flushed and generally pleased with himself—meaning, like, he's not <em>actively</em> glaring daggers at Sasha, only passively.</p><p>"Nicke!" Sasha grins and welcomes him in, waiting for Чак to stop jumping all over Nicke so that Sasha can take his coat.</p><p>Sasha follows Nicke towards the kitchen, can hear Sanya's derisive snort and lovingly judgmental comment about how he's such a meek little alpha, following an omega around his own home—but Sasha doesn't see how that's a bad thing, frankly. He'd follow Nicke anywhere, gladly, and be grateful for the opportunity.</p><p>Nicke drums his fingers while Sasha pours tea from his new fancy samovar. He doesn’t drink a lot of tea, but when he does, he wants it to be <em>Russian</em>. Also, Zhenya sent him pictures of his own new one that his mama had gotten him, and Sasha felt like he couldn’t be left behind in the race to real adulthood.</p><p>He sets the teacup in front of Nicke, and pushes over lingonberry jam. Nicke makes a face, but obligingly stirs a spoonful into his tea and then adds enough milk that Sasha winces. He knows Nicke prefers coffee, like apparently all good Swedes, but Nicke drinks tea <em>for Sasha</em>. Just as Sasha will drink coffee for Nicke.</p><p>“Thanks for the clothes,” Nicke finally says. Sasha feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his chair. “They . . . helped.”</p><p>“I love helping.” Sasha closes his eyes and takes a breath at his own nonsense.</p><p>“Do you think you would . . .” Nicke trails off and stares down at his teacup. “That is.”</p><p>“Yes,” Sasha says promptly, because whatever Nicke wants, he can have.</p><p>“You don’t even know—”</p><p>“Nicke.” He tries to tone himself down, because now is not the time to be boisterous. “Nicke, you want, you take. You have. Anything. Everything I have is for you if you want it.”</p><p>It's only because Sasha is watching so closely that he sees Nicke’s cheeks tint even pinker than usual.</p><p>“I thinking . . . a lot . . . our scents . . . you know.” Sasha waves his hand. “Very compatible.”</p><p>“Yes,” Nicke agrees. “I think we’ll be very compatible in other ways.”</p><p>Sasha’s heart is going to beat out of his chest. Nicke doesn’t just want his <em>laundry</em>; it sounds like Nicke also wants his <em>knot</em>.</p><p>“I compatible for you in every way,” Sasha says, since “Please marry me, I will always take care of you, I have a room full of blankets and pillows I bought for you, I think I have been in love with you since the first time you glared at me” would probably not be appropriate.</p><p>At that, Nicke smirks, and the scent of may-lilies fills the entire room. “We’ll see.”</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>Sasha feels incredibly impatient. He can’t even rely on his usual method of figuring out when Nicke’s heat is because he wants to bring Nicke purple Gatorade every single day. And he does.</p><p>Sanya has started rolling his eyes, because once in a while, when Nicke takes the Gatorade, he looks at Sasha from under his eyelashes and says lowly, “Thank you, Alpha.” Sasha chokes on his own tongue every single time.</p><p>The very best thing about playing NHL hockey is that the North Americans are so repressed about their dynamics that no one ever chirps them about it or turns it into a joke. The others mostly turn away and pretend they aren’t seeing anything.</p><p>Sasha is waiting and waiting for Nyls to come threaten him, like, “Don’t hurt Nicke,” or something equally annoying and unnecessary—but during practice one day, Nicke checks Sanya into the boards, and Sasha realizes: no, of course, Nicke would threaten Sasha himself if that needed to be done.</p><p>It only makes Sasha more eager for Nicke’s next heat.</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nicke squints at the calendar being presented to them during their team meeting, and nudges Sasha with his shoulder. “Your rut being scheduled that break?” he asks, clearly referring to the bright green highlighted days they have between games at the end of March.</p><p>“I guess?” Sasha says dubiously, and then his brain catches up with what’s going on. “I mean—yes, I think so.”</p><p>“Okay,” Nicke says, settling back in his chair. “I will make sure I’m available.”</p><p>And just like that, Nicke has apparently decided he’s going to help Sasha through his rut, the same way Sasha has been helping him through heats, but, oh, god, now Sasha is going to have to try not to give Nicke a claiming bite <em>through the haze of rut</em>.</p><p>Sasha despairs.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>It’s non-traditional for an omega to have their heat at the home of an alpha they are not bonded to, but since Nicke appears to have never been traditional about anything, Sasha doesn’t mention it; just makes sure there’s a lot of blankets, a lot of purple Gatorade, a lot of beef jerky, a lot of protein bars. Fresh fruit. Those Swedish meatballs you can buy in the freezer section of Ikea. The imported gravlax Sasha has seen in Nyls’s fridge. The dill-flavored pickled herring Nicke eats on potatoes with sour cream. The <em>knäckebröd</em> Nyls gives him a package of, whispering, “Boiled eggs.”</p><p>Nicke heats twice before Sasha’s rut, and both times Sanya embarrasses Sasha mightily by telling Nicke that Sasha is nervous and Nicke should be nice to him. Both times Nicke is very kind about it, in a way that he is never nice about anything, so Sasha knows it must be <em>really</em> embarrassing.</p><p>But Nicke allows Sasha to take care of him, to feed him; licks protein bar crumbs off Sasha’s fingers as easily as he licks off the sour cream, the pieces of gravlax. The second time, he looks at the bedding and frowns at Sasha and says, “You don’t have to buy new stuff every time,” and Sasha feels his face heat.</p><p>“No, I . . .” He trails off, and takes Nicke to the second bedroom, the one that smells of Nicke’s heat no matter how many times he washes the blankets, the T-shirt Nicke used to wipe them up after the first time, the pillowcases Nicke slept on that smells like his hair.</p><p>Nicke looks <em>delighted</em>, as much as he ever looks happy about anything that isn’t scoring on another team, and they fuck in the second bedroom for almost all of Nicke’s heat that time.</p><p>And Sasha is . . . both so happy and also almost positive this is going to <em>kill him</em>. Fucking Nicke is incredible. Nicke is not like any other omega Sasha has ever met: when he heats, he gets <em>even bossier</em>. He holds Sasha down and rides him, circles his wrists with strong fingers, or pushes him around with a palm on the center of Sasha’s chest. Bites his arms when he lets Sasha fuck him from behind.</p><p>The first time, Sasha had to bite his own shoulder to keep from biting Nicke’s neck while they were fucking. It was incredibly difficult—maybe the most difficult thing Sasha has ever done. When they were finally lying knotted together, Nicke on top, Nicke mouthed over where Sasha hurt himself, licked the blood, licked Sasha’s sweat. Sasha had never been so happy.</p><p>The second heat goes similarly, Nicke taking charge and pushing Sasha around, and Sasha offering Nicke snus off his fingers.</p><p>He's stopped trying to tell himself he's not in love.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>A few days after Nicke’s second heat, when they’re in the locker room and Sasha is trying not to smother Nicke in the affection bursting out of him every time he smells Nicke’s sweet, floral scent, Sasha goes to hand Sanya a purple Gatorade. He wants desperately to give it to Nicke, but Nicke is scowling at a trainer, and would <em>not</em> appreciate Sasha interrupting them for his . . . his stupid low-key courting behavior that Nicke would probably chalk up to Sasha’s instincts overriding his good sense, and then Nicke would stop letting Sasha take him through his heats, and would cancel their date for Sasha’s rut, and—</p><p>A hand is suddenly on Sasha’s wrist.</p><p>He freezes and turns to Nicke, suddenly standing next to him.</p><p>“No,” says Nicke viciously. “That’s <em>mine</em> and I <em>want it</em>. Give it to <em>me</em>.”</p><p>Sasha is handing it over before he even really processes what’s happening, nodding and saying, “Of course, Nicke, yes, you right, my mistake, of course, all my Gatorade for you.”</p><p>He watches as Nicke casts a triumphant look at Sanya and drains the entire bottle of Gatorade before turning back to the trainer and resuming his conversation like nothing happened.</p><p>Sanya laughs, clapping Sasha on the shoulder and leaving the room, while Sasha’s heart tries to beat out of his chest. He thinks that if he weren’t exhausted and smelly from practice, he might spontaneously knot.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>Sasha can’t tell if he’s because he’s getting closer to rut, or because Nicke is . . . Nicke is what? Doing it on purpose? He starts asking Sasha for things—did he always do that? Sasha can’t remember. He’s always been so attuned to Nicke, but did Nicke always ask Sasha to pass him towels or water bottles, or help open his new sock tape? Nicke never needed help opening his sock tape before.</p><p>Nicke never let Sasha kneel at his feet to tie his skate laces before.</p><p>After that incident, when they’re on the ice warming up, Clarkie comes over to Sasha and says, “Do not do that again in the dressing room, kid.”</p><p>“Uh,” says Sasha.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, we’re all fucking happy for you. But keep it <em>out</em> of the room unless you want an uncomfortable conversation with Coach.”</p><p>Sasha spends warmup skating around in circles, letting his mind play over what it was like to get on his knees for Nicke, how during his rut he's gonna sit Nicke at the end of his bed and get on his knees and <em>service him</em>, because Nicke had looked regal, like the old omega lords of lore, fierce rulers with a harem of alphas at their feet begging for scraps of attention.</p><p>Even though Sasha isn't properly courting him, Nicke's not giving anyone else his attention—just <em>Sasha</em>. <em>Sasha</em> is the one Nicke asks for things from, no one else, and it is <em>not</em> the time for this, not when he's this close to rut.</p><p>Someone slams him into the boards and skates away—Nicke. Nicke smirking at him like he’s <em>excited</em>, like he’s <em>teasing</em> Sasha, like he’s <em>ready</em> for their days off, like he's <em>looking forward to</em> Sasha’s rut.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>Sasha’s rut is <em>life-altering</em>.</p><p>Nicke orders him around, tells him sternly what to do and how to do it—touch me here, do not bite me, lick my fingers—and Nicke’s bossiness cows Sasha in his rut-dumb tracks just the way he likes, the way he’s always wanted.</p><p>And then Nicke goes into heat.</p><p>He's so slick and hot and swollen and pink and chubby and perfect, and decides during a quiet period to build them a nest with all the bedding Sasha’s been hoarding. Sasha finds this fascinating to sit and watch, one hand absently rubbing the thick, swollen base of his dick where his knot wants to pop just from <em>Sasha’s omega</em> taking care of them.</p><p>Then Nicke says, “Come here.”</p><p>He points to the ground at his feet, his voice brooking no room for argument, not that Sasha would want to even if it did.</p><p>Sasha goes, picking his way carefully between small mountains of bedding, stands in the spot by Nicke's feet that Nicke pointed him to. He doesn't like looking down at Nicke, though, where he's sitting at the end of the bed, so Sasha drops to his knees just like he had a few days ago in the locker room, kneels at Nicke's feet, feels himself settle. He leans his head on Nicke's thigh, cautious, exhaling hotly against Nicke's quad as Nicke brings a hand up to pet at his hair, stroking over it twice.</p><p>Sasha feels settled, kneeling at Nicke's feet placidly while Nicke keeps sorting bedding and pillows for their nest, seemingly paying no attention to Sasha—but it's not like Sasha minds, when Nicke is so focused on things Sasha provided him with.</p><p>Sasha feels himself start to ramp back up as the "to inspect" pile begins to dwindle; gets fidgety, again, feeling unsettled, like he needs to mark Nicke up with his scent, get him somewhere soft and warm and safe and protected, fill him with good things, food and water and Sasha's big, fat knot.</p><p>Nicke notices, of course he does, and pauses in his sorting to place a hand over the nape of Sasha's neck, calming. Grounding. Sasha rumbles happily and leans into it, feeling temporarily settled, enough to let Nicke finish his task.</p><p>It's not long before Nicke's done sorting, and then he puts <em>both</em> of his hands on Sasha at once, one stroking the hair at the nape of Sasha's neck, the other cupping the side of Sasha's jaw, tilting his face up to meet Nicke's eyes.</p><p>"I'm gonna finish our nest now," Nicke says, and Sasha tries and fails not to groan at the thought.</p><p>"I'll need to focus to do that," Nicke continues. "Can you go make sure everything we need is gathered in here? Go through the whole house, too, double check all the locks, make sure we're ready to ride this out."</p><p>Sasha thrills at the direction Nicke's given him, the trust implicit in it; he nods eagerly, smiling up at Nicke, pleased and attentive and eager to do as he's been instructed. Sasha's gonna do <em>so good</em>, he's gonna gather all the snacks, all the drinks, all the stuff Nicke could possibly need and want; he's going to make sure his den is <em>so secure</em>, check all the windows, too, not just the locks; Nicke's going to be <em>so safe</em>, and maybe he'll be pleased with Sasha for it, too, and—</p><p>Sasha tilts his head so he can press a grateful kiss to Nicke's palm before he stands and goes to do exactly as Nicke asked.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>When Sasha returns to the bedroom, arms laden with yet more supplies, he literally gasps out loud at the transformation Nicke has wrought.</p><p>The room itself looks mostly the same, but the second walk-in closet—the one Sasha never uses, has left empty in some misplaced hope that one day he'll have a partner to fill it with their own clothes—that closet's door is open, with soft, warm light spilling out into the darker bedroom.</p><p>The bedroom's lights are all off, otherwise, the blinds shut, making the room feel smaller, cozy, without the strong mid-afternoon winter light. The juxtaposition of the dark room with the warmly lit closet makes it extra appealing and welcoming; Sasha steps towards it as if in a trance, dumps his pile of supplies by the entrance for Nicke to look through before dropping to his knees, overwhelmed.</p><p>"Is—it's beautiful, Nicke," Sasha breathes. The walls of the closet have been draped with soft, plush blankets, insulating it, and the floor is covered wall to wall with pillows and cushions and smaller piles of neatly folded blankets, ready to be pulled over cold toes.</p><p>"Thank you, Alpha," Nicke says formally, the tips of his ears pinking up. "You provided for me so well," Nicke continues, and suddenly Sasha is rock hard, thunderstruck by the effect Nicke's words have had on him. He's never been told that before—not by anyone, and definitely not by an omega—and he's floored by how much it affects him.</p><p>"You welcome, Omega," Sasha says, using all his willpower to focus on the traditional words instead of just handing the reins over to his dick. "You make perfect nest for us. Thank you, Omega. Thank you."</p><p>"Aren't you going to come in?" Nicke asks, eyebrow cocked, not quite mocking, and—</p><p>Sasha is so overwhelmed; this started as Nicke and Sasha just . . . helping each other out. Being <em>compatible</em>. But the <em>significance</em> of this—Nicke could've just sat on Sasha's knot for a few days, eating gravlax and drinking purple Gatorade and not doing much else, and Sasha would've been happy with that; it would have been more than enough in his eyes.</p><p>But instead, Nicke's made this <em>nest,</em> a perfect spot for them to finish Sasha’s rut and Nicke’s heat, comfortable and <em>together</em>, and every inch of space shows the care and thought Nicke put into it.</p><p>Sasha kneels down in the closet doorway, bowing his head as he completes the traditional, formal phrasing, asking, "May I enter, omega?" Sasha lets his eyes peek up to catch Nicke's nod, meets the heat in his eyes; shivers all over as Nicke tells him, "Yes, alpha, you may enter my nest."</p><p>It's got everything, so much, but as Sasha crawls in towards Nicke's outstretched hands, he notices a neat stack of clean hand towels and washcloths, which Nicke must've pilfered from the master bath—they hadn't been in the piles of bedding Sasha provided. The thought of that, Nicke's attention to detail, his foresight in caretaking, wanting, ensuring that they'll be clean and comfortable, is what tips Sasha over the edge, metaphorically and also literally.</p><p>He's just—he's so in love with Nicke. He’s always been aware of the potential, but he hadn't let himself admit how fully enamored he is with this mean omega with his sharp little teeth. But here's the proof of it: Nicke isn't always mean, is so kind and generous and doting when he wants to be, and he wants to be <em>for Sasha.</em>.</p><p>He tips forward into Nicke's arms, knowing Nicke will catch him, and lets himself be swept away into their combined scents.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>Even dazed with Nicke’s heat pheromones and Sasha’s own rut instincts, Sasha’s first desire is still to <em>provide</em> for his omega—to <em> satisfy</em> him. Whatever Nicke wants, that's what Sasha will give him.</p><p>Nicke leans back against the wall of blankets and says, “Eat me,” and grabs Sasha by the back of his neck to push him down toward Nicke’s hole.</p><p>“Oh, yes. Yes.” Sasha goes, only half paying attention to what he’s doing, because Nicke is <em>filthy</em>, telling Sasha so many good things.</p><p>“That’s right, eat me, lick me, lick up all my slick, get me going,” Nicke’s saying, and Sasha buries his face between Nicke’s legs, lapping at his hole, still open and full of cream from their last coupling, but now also smelling of Nicke’s sweet candy heat scent, not just lilies but something else too, that Sasha hasn’t been able to put his finger on. Something delicious, that he wants to eat up, swallow into himself, never be parted from.</p><p>Sasha knows what Nicke likes from his last two heats, so he stuffs two fingers up into Nicke and licks around them, sucking and nibbling at the rim of his hole, everything getting slicker and wetter by the second. Nicke eventually stops talking and starts making these noises, little hitches of breath, bitten off gasps and moans. He’s never lost more control than that, but now  he slowly starts to, and Sasha glories in Nicke’s long, loud moans and the rocking thrusts as he fucks Sasha’s face.</p><p>When he comes, he gushes everywhere, slick spilling out from between Sasha's fingers where they're still stuffed up Nicke's hole and over his mouth and chin and face. It's the hottest thing that's ever happened to Sasha, and he has to hold his dick tightly to keep his knot from popping.</p><p>He clears his throat a few times, his fingers still in Nicke, and says, "God, that so hot, Nicke, can I—will you let me—please can I—"</p><p>Nicke, being Nicke, has recovered his power of speech with alacrity after his orgasm, and so he chides Sasha, "You have to be able to ask for it, Sashenka," and the pet name sends a thrill through Sasha's body. "What do you want me to let you do, exactly?"</p><p>"Fuck," Sasha curses, "want to do—want you to let me do whatever you want, Nicke, please, want to—"</p><p>Nicke cuts him off to prompt him, "Want to what, Sasha?"</p><p>Sasha groans. "Want <em>satisfy</em> you, want <em>knot you</em> so bad, Nicke, please can I, please say you let me, say you want it too, I—"</p><p>"I want it now," Nicke snarls viciously, and everything in Sasha lights up all at once as he scrambles to comply.</p><p>"Get your big thick cock in me," Nicke demands as Sasha fumbles off his sweatpants. "I want you to stuff me full with your fat fucking knot, fill me up—"</p><p>The base of Sasha's dick is tender and swollen; this is going to be over in seconds.</p><p>"—give it to me, give it to me <em>right now</em>," Nicke insists as Sasha pushes in. "<em>Give me your knot</em>," Nicke commands, and Sasha does, immediately, dick and knot buried in Nicke's ass after just one push, before he'd even gotten the chance to thrust.</p><p>But his omega demanded his knot, and so Sasha gave it to him—didn't even have a choice in it, really, just <em>did it, </em>automatic, dick locking itself deep in Nicke's ass as Sasha starts to come, the muscles in his thighs and ass tensing, flexing, with nowhere to go. Sasha <em>howls</em> with it, orgasm ripping through him, unexpected and sudden, jarring, and falls forward over Nicke's—and Nicke holds him, grabs him, crushes Sasha to his chest.</p><p>"<em>Yes</em>," Nicke's moaning, when Alex is processing auditory input again, "yes, yes, good, just like that, perfect, so <em>big</em>, Sasha, filling me up so well," and Sasha tunes back out after that because it's making his dick spurt again, a second orgasm right on the heels of the first—or maybe it's the same orgasm, just one long, extended, drawn out one, but either way—Nicke's squeezing his knot rhythmically, massaging the come out of him, flooding his insides with it, making Sasha shudder and whine and shudder some more.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>. . . Sasha is a little worried that he made it weird. That his use of the traditional phrasing maybe scared Nicke off? He knows this is stupid and silly and he needs to stop thinking about it, but he’s having serious rut-drop.</p><p>He's actually never experienced rut-drop before, but he has read about it. Heard about it in health class. Heard about it from the stupid NHL dynamics coach. The obsessive worry that he didn’t please his omega because his omega <em>left him afterward</em> is apparently extremely normal. That’s what Russian tumblr says, anyway, in between making fun of North Americans and political rumors.</p><p>Sasha knows Nicke only left because they're about to go on their last road trip of the season; that it wasn't because Nicke hates Sasha and his <em>big thick Alpha knot</em> that Nicke had begged for so prettily.</p><p>Well, <em>demanded</em> so prettily.</p><p>Sasha doesn't think he's ever felt shy before in his <em>life</em>, but he feels shy when he gets to the airport and sees his team congregating, drinking coffee and waiting for the plane to be ready.</p><p>He smells Nicke’s may-lilies before he sees Nicke, holding a cup in each hand. One of them is held out to Sasha. Waiting.</p><p>Sasha looks at Nicke’s frowning face and loves it so much.</p><p>“Alpha,” Nicke murmurs. “I put jam and milk in your tea.”</p><p>Sasha smiles dopily at him, taking the cup. “Thank you, my omega.”</p><p>“You’re welcome, my alpha.” Nicke’s eyes glint.</p><p>Sasha knows he’s playing right into the narrative the NHL set up for them, but—he and Nicke are gonna <em>bond</em>, and then they’re gonna win the Stanley Cup—and then they’re gonna get another dog.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>- Mатушка Россия — Mother Russia<br/>- Чак — Chuck, the actual literal name of one of ovi's five (count 'em! five!!) German Shepherds<br/>- Älg — Swedish moose</p><p>- Most of Nicke’s stats are real! Because he is amazing.<br/>- Lily-of-the-valley is the ~official flower of nicke's home province. It signifies "the return of happiness" in the language of flowers. jongley likes to hyphenate it because she likes hyphens. Dangercupcake let her because they are not a punctuation prescriptivist)))))))<br/>- Yes, Ovi really did in real life watch porn on his big screen TV and not close his curtains and his neighbors really did actually CALL HIS MAMA ABOUT IT.<br/>- yes, two of the scenes in this were based on tumblr posts. they can be found <a href="https://tbeauty4.tumblr.com/tagged/hbb">in jongley's hbb tag</a>, along with a bunch of other posts that fit the general ~vibe of this era/fic.<br/>- Some of this is made up, don’t @ us about it.</p><p>Here is a special note: When Ovi and Sanya used to go to a Korean bathhouse together, other people there noted that Sanya would SHAVE HIS PUBES IN THE PUBLIC AREAS, and also that his balls are incredibly big. We tried to fit these details into the fic, but they wouldn’t blend in organically, sadly, so now you have to read them in the end notes like heathens)))))))))))))</p></blockquote><div class="children module" id="children">
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